An Expert with a Degree or a Self-Taught Smarty?

Admin O of An Opinionated World is sharing his thoughts on expertise via a mini-rant. Who doesn’t like an nicely opinionated mini-rant now and then? The question he’s tackling: Do you need a degree to be an expert? Does that happy little piece of paper make you legit? Take it away, Mr. O!

One of the reason I created my blog a year and a half ago was to voice my opinions, opinions that were sometimes listened to but not often considered valid because I am not an “expert” on the topic. I am amongst the many people who are ignored because the knowledge we speak was not taught to us for years in a classroom and later justified with a piece of paper that says we “passed” the subject. It greatly annoys me when a perfectly legitimate source of information is ignored because they don’t have a degree stating that…